Fire and rain

Kashmir

Apr 7th 2005 SRINAGAR
From The Economist print edition

A rare chance for Kashmiri celebration becomes another reason for gloom

“THE caravan of peace is on its way,” declared India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh. “Nothing can stop it.” The opponents of Indian rule in Kashmir, however, are doing their best. The prime minister was speaking to a paltry, desultory crowd, under grey skies and chilly drizzle, as two buses, garlanded with soggy marigolds, left Srinagar, capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, towards the Pakistani-controlled part. It was supposed to be a grand send-off for a bus service reopened for the first time since the partition of India and Kashmir in 1947. But the party had already been spoiled.

Militant groups fighting Indian rule had threatened to turn the buses into “coffins”. Chillingly, the threats had included the names and addresses of the first passengers. On the eve of the buses' departure, two militants with grenades and rifles mounted a suicide attack on the building where most of them had been moved for their protection. The building burned into a charred shell. The passengers survived, though of the 29 scheduled to leave, ten withdrew after the threats. The buses reportedly came under grenade attack, but as The Economist went to press, were still safe.

Many Kashmiris had yearned for the bus, and the chance it gives long-separated families for a reunion. Were the road to open for other traffic, it might also be an important trade route to Pakistan and Central Asia. But, as so often, Kashmiris ended up with little to celebrate. Very few will be able to travel on the buses, which at first will leave only fortnightly.

Angry with the terrorists, many Kashmiris have also criticised India for making political capital out the occasion. As Pervez Imroz, a human-rights lawyer in Srinagar, sourly puts it: “They've turned it into a victory parade.” Indian-controlled Kashmir has endured 15 years of insurgency. The fear the bus provokes is that it will have been in vain: by allowing the passengers across the “line of control” that divides Kashmir, Pakistan has hinted that, in the long run, it may accept it as a border, and the status quo will persist.

In Delhi and Islamabad, there is some optimism at the moment that, in the context of an overall improvement in Indian-Pakistani relations, the dispute over Kashmir may after all be soluble. India and Pakistan are playing cricket with each other, and Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, is to visit India to watch a match on April 17th, and discuss “everything” with Mr Singh.

Many Kashmiris reject the Indian and Pakistani view of their predicament as simply a bilateral issue between the two countries. Yasin Malik, leader of one of the main separatist groups, recently staged an exhibition in Delhi. It took the form of photographs and pile upon pile of hand-written paper. It bore 1.5m Indian Kashmiri signatures, demanding not independence, not even self-determination, but merely consultation over the signatories' future.

Mr Malik visited more than 5,000 villages, and points out that he secured six times as many signatures as the votes won in 2002 by the party that governs the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir. It is a reminder that neither Pakistan nor India is offering Kashmiris a seat at the table where their future will be decided. That, in part, is why, even before its benighted launch, the bus service was for many a cause for at best muted celebration.

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